Because China is not a society where people can express themselves openly, just as it can be asserted that: "There is no sign that [Charter 08] had mass appeal", there is, likewise, little sign that it didn't.

In my travels in China, I have been struck by just how many people are aware of, and encouraged by, Charter 08, and that's in spite of government efforts to "wipe" it from the internet. What alarmed the authorities about Charter 08 was not only that people from various sectors of society signed it but that people from virtually every province contributed to its drafting. You won't find many "in the know" willing to discuss that in any detail for fear of tipping off the authorities.

Brian Kern

Hong Kong

What price the arts in this country?

Robert McCrum's fine
analysis of the collapse of high culture ("Shorn of dissent, high culture has become little different from The X Factor", Viewpoint) neglects to point the finger beyond the complicit artists and writers.

Most of us find great difficulty in determining how narrow will become the ground on which the patronage of commissioning editors, artistic directors and executive producers is built. There is no original drama on television, merely genre and the dramatisation of fiction and biography.

As with film, British publishing has become a lowly outpost of an international enterprise that believes itself to be dependent upon supposed and aspirant celebrity. And, as I have found, the regional and subsidised theatres so feted in the press do not generally look at unsolicited plays in the decade that they are submitted.

Until those who commit funds to new works are allowed to look beyond the fast buck, only complicit artists need apply.

Seventy years after the Kindertransport, when nearly 10,000 Jewish children fled from Hitler and found refuge in Britain, where has our humanity gone? In other EU countries, children come under a community-based arrangement.

Dr Edie Friedman executive director

the Jewish Council for Racial Equality London NW11

■ Henry Porter wonders "what is in the minds of people like Phil Woolas, the Home Office minister in charge of the UK Border Agency and the policy of child detention" (News). He knows, of course: the electorate, informed by the bigotry of tabloid newspapers. But maybe we are not as brainwashed as Woolas expects and humane leadership may do him no harm.

John Airs

Liverpool

The truth worth of a Tobin tax

Your editorial "Why the Tobin tax could be Brown's legacy" makes a good case for a levy on global financial transactions. It is reasonable to assume a Tobin tax would be levied on those with a low propensity to spend and the redistribution of the revenues would be towards those with a higher propensity to spend. So aggregate demand should increase. There are, however, major political obstacles, in addition to what you rightly suggest: the international co-ordination that would be required and the political power of the financial sector. A Tobin tax by itself cannot perform miracles. It would be more appropriate to use the tax as one of several policy instruments that could be co-ordinated to discourage speculation. The potential of the Tobin tax to provide revenues is enormous.

Philip Arestis, director of research, Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy,University of Cambridge

Don't blame Gordon Brown

Will Hutton castigated Gordon Brown and the government for not foreseeing the credit crunch ("Darling's plan was more radical than he got credit for. But it is not enough", Comment). Unfortunately, neither the opposition nor senior people in other countries saw what was coming. Aiming all the blame at Gordon Brown is not fully fair. The proper questions now are what plans are appropriate for the future and how confident can we be that such plans will be adequately 'bomb-proof' against possible future shocks? These could include the availability food, energy and raw materials, the pressures of increasing population and requirements to combat climate change.

John Chubb

Cheltenham

There's one law for…

So Mohammed Ezzouek went to Somalia because "he wanted to live under sharia" and then, when the Ethiopians mounted a bombing campaign, fled to Kenya, where he was arrested on suspicion of terrorism ("I was in a foreign cell but my interrogators were British agents", News). Other Britons, found carrying drugs abroad, have also expressed surprise and fear at their treatment when apprehended. Suddenly, they develop a longing for the legal systems of their native country. Shouldn't they be aware by now that there are many countries where torture, lack of legal representation and violent conflict are the norm?

Spare us the tortured imagery

So much for Gospel truths

In "Bible tales are retold for the secular age" (News) frequent use is made of the phrase "the Nativity story". In the Christian myth, there are two of these, one in the gospel attributed to Matthew, and a different one in the gospel attributed to Luke. About all they have in common is that Joseph and Mary had a baby boy in Bethlehem and Joseph wasn't the real father.

Both writers wrote their accounts long after the supposed time of the Nativity and lifted their material from much older saviour god stories, such as the one about Mithras. But I don't suppose any of this is taught in schools in this so-called secular age.